


Seasonal Tulips

by miloron (ocoa)



Category: NU'EST
Genre: AU - Hanahaki Disease, Multi, Wheee long story, their life is just shit show after shit show, this is actually low key hilarious, why does Nu'est keep suffering in my fics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-26
Updated: 2017-09-26
Packaged: 2019-01-05 17:37:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,391
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12194574
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ocoa/pseuds/miloron
Summary: Jonghyun gets the surgery.





	Seasonal Tulips

**Author's Note:**

> *SENSITIVE DO NOT SHARE*  
> File: Kim Jonghyun (30, blood type: O+)  
> Symptoms: Internal bleeding, particularly in lung area. Roots ingrown into lung but still removable through surgery  
> Details: Patient had signed contract for automatic removal of tulip plant growing in his lungs the moment it is considered "too late", stating that he would rather keep his unrequited feelings for as long as he can. Showed symptoms since July 2019, according to band (NU'EST) member and roommate Choi Minki (30)  
> Treatment: Undergoing Tsukiyama Surgical Procedure for removal of roots.
> 
>  
> 
> Hit me up with plot suggestions or anything at my [askFM page](https://ask.fm/bugiron) hoho

When Jonghyun collapsed into a puddle of his own vomit, blood and the leaves and bulbs of tulips that expelled from his chest in hacking coughs midway through rehearsal, they all know what happened, and why. Their manager doesn't bat an eye, only scoops him up into an ambulance that is already there, firing information to the paramedics with nary a glance at the rest of them. Aron is the one to drive them to the hospital, but the drive is tense and quiet when Minki doesn't even want to look at Minhyun and Dongho.

Dongho gave Minhyun tulips for their anniversary. It made sense.

The surgery goes without a hitch, though Aron never quite knew that "The surgery was a success" could have been such a dilemmatic sentence. It seemed too easy, he thinks, for all those months of Jonghyun's pained expressions and pale complexion, of the coughing he hears from Jonghyun and Minki's room, of Minki's low voice soothing out the shakiness of Jonghyun's sobs that permeates through the walls to Aron's room, waking him and keeping him awake until the voices disappear, for all that to just vanish.

But when Jonghyun wakes up, his face is blank, and he doesn't wear the faked smile when he sees Dongho and Minhyun anymore either.

A part of Aron is happy, of course. They let this carry for too long, Jonghyun was lucky, the doctor had said. Anymore and he would have died. But he knows this was a mistake, on Minhyun and Dongho's part.

Minki tears into them in the hallway, his voice carrying just enough for Aron to make it out but not Jonghyun who Aron coaxed back to sleep.

"You said you would talk to him!" Minki screamed. "To make sure this didn't need to happen. To make it clear."

The other two don't say anything, shamed, and maybe regretting it all.

Aron remembers the days he doesn't sleep, when he walks into the kitchen and sees Jonghyun retching into the sink which is choking with spit diluted blood and the torn tulip leaves. He reached over to rub Jonghyun's back, handed him a glass of warm tea with honey. It's hard to deal with Hanahaki, the disease was never meant to be long term, but Jonghyun, he supposed, was stubborn.

"I don't want to tell them," he said to Minki, but catches Aron's eyes as he said it. "I don't want them to force themselves to fall in love with me. But I don't want to lose this feeling of loving them either." His smile is weak but genuine.

But the surgery changes people. He's forgotten, Aron knows, when Jonghyun touches his heart at the sight of Dongho and Minhyun with a blank expression.

"What did the tulips mean?" He asks them, curious.

Nothing outside of this changes, and Jonghyun is still Jonghyun even when sometimes he stops and blinks, staring at the things in his room. "Why did I keep this?" He asked Aron, and Aron forces a smile that furrows his eyebrows.

Jonghyun throws most of it out. The paper flower Dongho clumsy folds back when they were in high school. The back and forth messages Minhyun and Jonghyun wrote on scraps of paper in the middle of company meetings, with ugly doodles of the CEO with added decorations. Onibugi, the stuffed turtle that Minhyun and Dongho brought back from one of their dates, is moved to the storeroom for how beaten it is. He doesn't notice the specks of blood on it, or the tears left on its back.

Jonghyun is happier after the surgery, but Dongho gets quieter and locks himself in the room with the excuse of producing and Minhyun simply doesn't seems to laugh as hard anymore. Minki still doesn't talk to them outside of shows, just to reassure their fans and friends that nothing had changed.

Everything has changed though, and Jonghyun knows.

"Is it my fault?" he asks, voice small.

It sounds like the days Aron wants to forget, back when Jonghyun thought he failed them as a leader that day in Japan, when he told them that they would be joining Produce 101, when Minhyun came home and for a while everything just seemed like a war between their fans and Wanna One's until they won the fans over, when Jonghyun confessed that he loved both Minhyun and Dongho and that he had Hanahaki for nearly two years before even Minki found out.

He reached out to clasp a hand on Jonghyun's shoulder. "It's not your fault," he said resolutely. Jonghyun didn't look convinced, and the next morning found him trying to coax Dongho out and lure Minhyun into smiling again, and soon enough it works. He even manages to get Minki into civil conversation with the two, and Aron never realised that he himself hasn't spoken to anyone other than Jonghyun casually for a long time. Hard to, when everything is so tense.

But they sit at the dining table together after a long long time, all 5 of them, and they talk about more than work, they scream and tease and laugh and it almost starts to look normal again. Until Aron sees how Dongho's eyes softened at the edges as he looked at Jonghyun, or how Minhyun wipes sauce from Jonghyun's mouth despite his aversion to unhygienic practices like that, or how the two of them laugh too hard at Jonghyun, or look at him like he hung the moon.

He pulls them aside.

"I hope you know what you're doing." He warns them, but he knows them.

"We like him," Dongho confessed, "and he can't ever love us anymore."

Minhyun closed his eyes and rubbed the bridge of his nose. "We wanted to tell him since a long time ago but he collapsed. The the surgery..."

The silence hung, the severity of the situation clear.

Aron let out a hysterical laugh that he barely contained from booming out. This can't be happening, not after everything. "You need to do something about it," he managed with a strained voice. "You can't make him go through the same thing as you. He doesn't deserve to suffer again."

They didn't deserve to suffer again.

The first of the tulips bloom the month after, first Dongho then Minhyun. They collapse after that, and the manager talk to them about the surgery again.

"Is it my fault?" Jonghyun asks again, whispering in fear that Minki, who sleeps on his lap after crying himself exhausted, would wake up.

Aron doesn't say anything, lips pressed together even as he gathers Jonghyun and Minki closer to him. He laces Jonghyun's hands with his. Dongho and Minhyun's monitors beep in unison in the background, melding with the pulse he feels where Jonghyun's wrist meets his.

"Maybe the world just hates us."

Jonghyun gave a short bitter laugh.

"At this point, I think it's a certainty." Jonghyun whispers, but the words come out sharp and probably more sincere than he had planned. He leant his head on Aron's, and his breathing evens out so much that Aron wonders if he fell asleep but then he speaks out in a soft and drained voice. "I loved them, didn't I? Before the surgery?"

"Yeah you did."

"And they love me."

"Yeah."

"I think I'm going to try."

Aron turned to him. And Jonghyun smiled back at him, looking so lost and exhausted that Aron tightened his grip on his leader's hand. It's hard to remember that they're all younger than 35 when so much has happened, and the weight on their souls was too much.

"I'm going to try and fall in love with them again."

Aron closed his eyes, and forced himself to smile. "Don't force yourself." He says, because they all know there wasn't much else they could do. Aron also knows that Jonghyun would never stop until he finishes what he sets out to do. If there's anyone capable of performing a miracle, it was probably Jonghyun.

The monitors beeped in their never ending rhythm, and as Jonghyun actually starts to fall asleep, Aron stares out into the expanse of the sky and prays that it would work. He cards a hand through Minki's hair, and sighs.

The stars twinkle and blur out into darkness. They don't offer an answer, but Aron hopes.

**Author's Note:**

> Hullo, I decided to play around with a trope (again) 
> 
> Anyway the whole prompt for this was Love Is A Choice Not A Feeling, which is something I agree with, as unpopular as that is. Anyway I got a bit lazy near the end, so I chose not to have an ending. 
> 
> If you want to see me butcher any other fan fiction tropes, or if you enjoyed this, or hell if you didn't, hit me up in the comments and thank you have a nice day :)
> 
> [My word count is getting quite sad. Once upon a time 1000+ words was considered my normal]


End file.
